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Tag Archives: Historical Fiction

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  2. Entries tagged with "Historical Fiction"

Feature image for The Newer World by Sebastian Barry

#BookReview of The Newer World by Sebastian Barry

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne4th September 20262 Comments

[ About The Newer World ] I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things. . . were gone forever.Against a rapidly shifting landscape, Tennyson Bouguereau – freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man – journey to find meaning and belonging. From the…

Feature image for The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

#BookReview of The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne2nd September 20264 Comments

[ About The Calamity Club ] Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Ever since her beloved mother failed to come home last Christmas Eve, she’s been one of the ‘unadoptable’ girls at the town’s orphanage, where she fights each day to keep her wits sharp and her…

A Fatal Love Cover against a red background

#BookReview of A Fatal Love by Louisa Treger

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne10th August 20262 Comments

[ About A Fatal Love ] It is Easter Sunday in 1955 and a young man lies face-down on the ground covered in blood. A woman, blonde and petite, stands over him with a gun in her hand. This is the story of Ruth Ellis as never told before… As Ruth awaits her trial in…

Cover of The City in Year Zero by Michael Russell and the words - The tenth and final installment in Michael Russell’s Stefan Gillespie series - against a faded image of the book cover

#BookReview of The City in Year Zero by Michael Russell

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne30th July 2026Leave a comment

[ About The City in Year Zero ] Nothing thrived here, but something grew… Germany, 1945. Year Zero. The war is at an end. When Ireland’s ambassador to the Third Reich finally leaves the war-torn country, Garda detective Stefan Gillespie makes his way home under the watchful eye of British Intelligence, who are searching for some…

Feature image of The cover of The Glass Key by Amanda Geard with the quote 'Forty-six years after her disappearance, the name Anna Swan still lingered in Hellebore House, just a whisper on everyone’s lips'

#BookReview of The Glass Key by Amanda Geard

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne24th July 20262 Comments

[ About The Glass Key ] In Ireland, Maggie has grown up hearing her mother tell her the bedtime story of The Glass Key. It’s a Nordic fairytale passed down by Maggie’s grandmother Anna Swan, who mysteriously left her home one stormy night years ago, never to return. Now Maggie’s grandfather has died and going through…

#BookReview of The Healers’ War by Olive Collins

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne3rd July 2026Leave a comment

Inspired by real events during the Biafran War (1967–1970), The Healers’ War follows three lives bound together by famine, faith, and survival in a besieged corner of Eastern Nigeria. [ About The Healer’s War ] As war encroaches upon their region, Irish missionaries refuse to flee, instead building feeding centers, clinics, and a secret airstrip…

#BookReview of Mithim by Carina McNally

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne30th June 20262 Comments

[ About Mithim ] Wexford, 1657. Ireland is on its knees. Eight years after Cromwell’s army burned Killenea Castle to the ground, Mithim McMurrough – daughter of a Gaelic lord, healer and last keeper of her family’s secrets – is living alone and in hiding in the depths of a Wexford forest. The soldiers are…

Land by Maggie O'Farrell with a quote from the publisher on a featured image

#BookReview of #Land by Maggie O’Farrell

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne5th June 20262 Comments

[ About Land ] On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not…

The Hope Keeper by Heather Webb featuring with the tagline from the description

#BookReview of The Hope Keeper by Heather Webb

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne26th May 2026Leave a comment

[ About The Hope Keeper ] 1919, Washington D.C. Elisabeth Beaumont comes from a renowned jeweler family, but after the untimely death of her twin brother, she’s left on her own to run the failing family business. Desperate for work, she approaches the affluent crowd her brother Julien once courted to expand Beaumont Jewelers. Their ringleader…

#BookReview of #InMemoriam by Alice Winn

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne3rd March 20263 Comments

The must-read, Sunday Times bestselling First World War love story [ About In Memoriam ] It’s 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in an idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they’re too young to enlist, and anyway,…

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